Culture | TV It’s without a doubt one of the most highly anticipated sci-fi series to land on a streaming platform in years. Created by
Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D. B. Weiss , and based on the international Chinese sci-fi best-seller of nearly the same name , 3 Body Problem is about to take over your
Social Media feeds, and provoke dinner-party conversations about
aliens and physics. It’s a story about Ye Wenjie (Rosalind Chao), an astrophysicist who is conscripted into China’s army sometime during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) and sent to a radar base to work on a top secret project. A decision she makes there sends ripples through space and time, and a group of scientists in the modern day have to grapple with the consequences of her actions. Set in
London, Oxford, the
United Nations in
New York and in
China, and starring Eiza González , Liam Cunningham , Jonathan Pryce and John Bradley , if the series’
trailer, and the success of the book , are anything to go by, sci-fi fans should prepare to be taken on a wild ride through the universe. Here’s everything to know about 3 Body Problem, which is landing on
Netflix next week. The upcoming eight-parter is about what happens when a Chinese scientist in the Sixties, who is working at a top secret space agency, decides to respond to an unexpected message from outer space. We won’t explain anymore so we don’t spoil things for those who haven’t read the book yet. Let’s just say that the decision, which is arguably a bit rash, has decades-long repercussions, and scientists working in the modern day have to work out what to do, as the laws of physics holding the universe together seem to have been affected. In order to save humanity, they collaborate with a mysterious detective who might know more about what’s happening that he first admits. Yes. It’s based on Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem, an award-winning sci-fi novel published in Chinese in 2008 and in English six years later, which became an international hit. One of the first Chinese novels to truly make an impact with Western audiences, Cixin’s mind-boggling epic has found fans in everyone from George R.R. Martin to Barack Obama: “The scope of it was immense,” said the ex-president in 2017. “So that was fun to read, partly because my day-to-day problems with
Congress seem fairly petty. Millions of copies of Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem have been sold around the world. It’s picked up nine book awards, and has already been adapted into a Chinese TV series which premiered in January last year. The book became so famous that its translator, Ken Liu, even did an interview with The New York Times. “The Three-Body Problem was unlike anything Liu had ever read,” the paper said. “A mind-bending epic set in
Beijing, Inner Mongolia and on a distant planet, the novel was full of heady technical passages about quantum theory, nanotechnology, orbital mechanics and astrophysics, intertwined with profound moral questions about the nature of good and evil and humanity’s place in the universe.” Wes Anderson pays tribute to Owen Wilson after first Oscar win Ryan Gosling and
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Women in culture Three-body problem is an actual problem in physics. It’s to do with working out kinetic trajectories between three fixed bodies in space, using Newton's laws of motion. At the moment, it is apparently impossible to find one formula that fits all positions and velocities. “Given three bodies moving in space and attracted to each other by gravitational forces, how will they continue to move?” explained Timothy Gowers in 2008’s The Princeton Companion to Mathematics. “Using Newton’s laws, one can write down some differential equations that describe this situation. “Newton solved the corresponding equations for two bodies, and thereby explained why planets move in elliptical orbits around the Sun, but for three or more bodies they proved very hard indeed to solve. It is now known that there was a good reason for this: the equations can lead to chaotic behavior. However, this opens up a new and very interesting avenue of research into questions of chaos and stability.” The new Netflix series is set to have a stellar cast, including several actors from Game of Thrones. The series stars both Rosalind Chao (Sweet Tooth, Better Things) and Zine Tseng (in her first major role) who play older and younger versions of Ye Wenjie, and both Jonathan Pryce (The Crown) and Ben Schnetzer (Pride, Y: The Last Man), who play older and younger versions of Mike Evans, an environmentalist who becomes a billionaire
Oil tycoon. Then Benedict Wong (Doctor Strange, Avengers: Infinity War) plays ex-intelligence officer Da Shi, Jess Hong (Inked, The Brokenwood Mysteries) plays Oxford scientist Jin Cheng, Jovan Adepo (The Stand, When They See Us) plays research assistant Saul Durand and Eiza González (I Care A Lot, Godzilla vs. Kong, Fast & Furious) plays nanotech trailblazer Auggie Salazar. Game of Thrones star John Bradley (North Shore, Moonfall) plays scientist Jack Rooney, Alex Sharp (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time [Broadway production]) plays sixth-form physics teacher Will Downing, and Liam Cunningham (Game of Thrones) plays intelligence boss Wade. Marlo Kelly (Joe vs. Carole, Dare Me) plays Tatiana, a mysterious figure who has, as Netflix’s Tudum puts it, been “raised from birth in Mike Evans’ organization”. Sea Shimooka (Arrow, MacGyver ) plays avatar Sophon, while Saamer Usman (Inventing Anna, What/If) plays naval officer Raj Varma. 3 Body Problem has been created by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss alongside Alexander Woo, who worked as a writer on True Blood. “This is very much a story about humanity, and humanity’s struggle with a seemingly unsolvable mystery that snowballs into a full-on existential crisis,” said Benioff to Netflix, discussing the decision to give 3 Body problem an international cast. “So we wanted to represent, as much as possible, all of humanity. We wanted people from all over the world... to represent the idea that this isn’t just one country’s struggle; it’s a global struggle to survive.” Woo said: “The scope and size of [the adaptation] was really exciting... Having it rooted in a period of Chinese history was also really exciting.” The
music has been created by award-winning Game of Thrones composer Ramin Djawadi. In 2019 it was reported that Benioff and Weiss has signed a multi-year deal with Netflix that was worth around £165 million ($200 million). Yes, and so far they have been quite mixed. Some reviewers have heralded the new series, while other has been less complimentary, describing it as “a brutal dud”, and an “ambitious mess”. “There is so much packed into these eight episodes, so many tones and styles and genres. It is part police-procedural potboiler, part historical-fiction epic, part puzzle-box mystery, part scientific-discovery adventure, part alien-invasion sci-fi,” said one reviewer. “That it feels coherent at all is an achievement.” Another said: “It is ambitious in the same way that
Elon Musk is ambitious – ie, occasionally you marvel at the sheer scope, the chutzpah, the vision, the money; and occasionally you sigh at the vainglorious folly, the po-faced grandeur, the childish whims, the money.” Yes. We’ve popped it at the top of the page. 3 Body Problem premieres on Netflix on March 22 MORE ABOUT Have your say...